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Mark Wahlberg talks Pain & Gain

Actor formerly known as Marky Mark says “I could have been Danny Lugo”

In Pain & Gain, Mark Wahlberg plays Danny Lugo, a former bodybuilder who's on death row for kidnapping, torture and murder. Wahlberg, who grew up in a tough part of Boston and committed crimes as a teen, says, "I could have been Danny Lugo." (Charles Sykes / AP)

Mark Wahlberg was doing a press marathon for his latest film, Pain & Gain, which opens April 26. It’s a black comedy, heavily laced with action, about a bevy of body builders who decide to try the kidnapping racket in the hopes of scoring some big bucks.

It seems that all anybody wanted to know was how much weight Wahlberg put on for the movie, how many meals he ate a day and what kind of exercise regimen he endured

So by the time he got to the Star, he sprang into the monologue he’d been perfecting all day.

“Yeah, I put on nearly 40 pounds and I did it by eating 10 meals a day. Can you imagine that? Damn, I’d have to set the alarm to get up at 2 in the morning to eat another meal and I was still full from the one I finished at 10 that night.

“And the workouts? A lot of old-fashioned weight lifting, the hard kind. Yeah I caused myself some damage getting ready, but it’s all part of the deal.”

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It was an entertaining spiel and Wahlberg delivered it well, but when he was asked, “Yeah, but how did you prepare for the inside of the character?” you could almost hear him sigh with relief.

“Oh man, that’s really the reason I wanted to do this picture,” he said in a different voice. “If I hadn’t shifted gears when I was young, I could have been Danny Lugo, no doubt about it.”

Lugo is a real person, currently sitting on death row in Florida for the crimes he committed as part of the infamous “Sun Gym Gang,” bodybuilders who created a brutal, short-lived empire of kidnapping, torture and murder.

Why did Wahlberg, superstar actor and major Hollywood executive, feel that piece of gym scum could have been him?

“Because I was headed down that path. I grew up in a part of Boston so tough that making it alive to puberty was a big deal.”

He had a serious coke habit at 13 and, as he told the Star in a 2003 interview, “I was on my way to being one more kid who wound up dead in a dumpster before he was old enough to vote.”

But fate intervened. Stoned on angel dust at 16, he went on a crime spree with some buddies that ended with him gouging out a guy’s eye with a metal hook.

He was sentenced to two years in prison but somehow got sprung after 45 days.

“I don’t like to think what would have happened to a kid like me if I had to do the full time. Somebody was watching out for me.”

It wasn’t like Wahlberg turned into a saint overnight. He still kept tussling with the law until he was 21, when he broke into the music business as Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, spouting homophobic slogans and partying big time.

“I’m not proud of all the stuff I did when I was young, but that’s who I was and nothing I say or do is ever gonna change it. You just have to learn not to go back there again.”

When a script like Pain & Gain fell into his lap, it gave him a chance to visit the road not taken in his life.

“When I read it, I was hooked by the madness of it all, the sheer insanity of what these guys did and almost got away with it. Then I went back and read the true story it was based on and realized that the real stuff they did in some cases was even worse than what’s in the picture. Those guys did things we wouldn’t dare put on the screen.”

Wahlberg admits that it’s a bit of a juggling act letting the things that landed a man on death row form the basis of a fast-moving, entertaining film.

“I think that challenge is what appealed to me the most,” he says. “I couldn’t make this guy seem like a hero, because that would be totally wrong. But I can’t spend that much time inside the skin of somebody I hate, so I had to concentrate on the positive: his goofy optimism no matter what went wrong, his crazy sense of humour and the fact that I don’t think he went into the whole mess thinking it was going to turn out as bad as it did.”

When preparations were underway for Pain & Gain, someone suggested that Wahlberg visit the real Danny Lugo, but it never materialized.

“At first I thought it could be interesting and useful, but the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to do it,” Wahlberg says. “I create characters, I don’t copy them. And besides, there’s some people whose eyes you’re not sure you can look into, so I finally passed.”

Wahlberg is truly a wild card in his profession, turning in highly acclaimed straight performances in powerful films like The Departed and The Fighter, then sending himself up sky high in movies like Date Night or Ted.

“I don’t have any system for choosing roles or building a career,” he claims. “That is so not me. I look for a good part in a good script with a good director attached. That’s enough for me.”

But he also has sufficient industry smarts to have served as executive producer for all eight successful seasons of Entourage, which has frequently been cited as being based on Wahlberg’s early years in Hollywood, with Adrian Grenier’s Vincent Chase standing in for the star.

Wahlberg is also a devout Catholic, although he didn’t marry his wife Rhea Durham until three of their four children were born.

“I’m not perfect, man, but I’m there every Sunday trying my best. That’s all I can do.”

He’s actually done a lot more. In 2001, he founded the Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation, “so that inner city kids can at least get a break when they’re starting out in the world.”

Among numerous other initiatives, the foundation has been sending 150 underprivileged youths from Wahlberg’s hometown, Boston, to summer camp every year, “just to get them away from the poison of the city.”

And he recently partnered with Taco Bell for the Graduate to Go campaign, where $4 million will be distributed this year to schools and other organizations to keep kids from dropping out of high school.

“I’ve got four kids and I want them to have the best lives possible. And that makes me want the same thing for every kid. I don’t mind doing work for the foundation or paying extra taxes as long as every kid has access to a great education and great health care.”

So Wahlberg just keeps on trucking, playing good guys, bad guys and every shade of grey in between. How does he find balance in it all?

“I just try to stay as optimistic as possible, no matter what happens.”

FIVE FAVE FILMS

BOOGIE NIGHTS

“It was one crazy ride, but that’s what you get with (director) Paul Thomas Anderson.”

THE FIGHTER

“We were all so into our characters that it wasn’t like coming to work everyday. It was like coming back home.”

THE DEPARTED

“To make a movie with Marty (Scorsese) is a privilege. And I’m very proud of the work I did for him.”

THE YARDS

“Probably the least known of all my movies, but possibly my favourite. James Gray was a director of vision.”

PAIN & GAIN

“You always love the last movie you did, because you put so much of yourself into it and you just hope the people like it.”

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